Tuesday, 12 May 2026

 Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (19:14): (1655) My adjournment matter tonight is for the Premier. I am here to call for the Victorian government to audit every contract that the state Labor government has with the US-based AI surveillance corporation Palantir and come clean with Victorians about the type of data that it has handed over to them. Palantir is an AI and data analytics company co-founded by Peter Thiel, a tech billionaire who was also a major political donor to Donald Trump. It is one of the most secretive and powerful companies in Silicon Valley, used by government agencies, the military and major corporations to surveil customers, workers and citizens. Its AI surveillance technology is being used by immigration and customs enforcement at the moment in the US to surveil and deport immigrants and by Israel to surveil and kill Palestinians. Palantir has even published a pretty disturbing manifesto online, arguing the benefits of American power and implying some cultures are inferior to others, and they have admitted that their technology is used to kill people. Yet under Labor, Palantir is being given government contracts that could have big consequences for our own citizens. According to the Guardian, Corrections Victoria alone has handed Palantir nearly $20 million in contracts since 2012. Federal agencies, including defence, spent over $100 million on similar Palantir contracts, and Coles even uses Palantir to spy on shoppers and on workers.

We should be deeply concerned when Palantir is so embedded in institutions across Australia, including here in Victoria, and vacuuming up even more and more sensitive data on our citizens with so little information and transparency about it. Victorians should not be surveilled by AI technology from a US company that has shown such disregard for human rights. One of the worst offenders right now is Australia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Future Fund. Since 2023 the Future Fund’s holdings in Palantir have increased from under $7 million to over $165 million. How is that possible – an increase of over 2400 per cent in investment in a company that is willingly and openly arming a genocide and has such disregard for human rights? Labor has a moral obligation to disclose the contracts with this company, and in fact I do not think we should be dealing with this Trump-aligned company at all.

While we are on this topic I want to note this is an especially solemn week for Palestinians. This Friday, 15 May, will be the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, which commemorates the forced relocation of around 75,000 Palestinians and the killing of thousands more. For Palestinians, the Nakba has never ended; they still do not have the right to return to the homes that they were displaced from or compensation for stolen property. They are facing a genocide, a two-tiered citizenship system and illegal settlements in the West Bank.